The Settling Dark
by WinterD
Summary: On October 8 at approximately 4:16 A.M. in a lab that no company or government would ever willingly admit to knowing about, an accident occurred.


Title: The Settling Dark

Rated: M (for violence mostly)

Summary: On October 8 at approximately 4:16 A.M. in a lab that no company or government would ever willingly admit to knowing about, an accident occurred.

Disclaimer: I own nothing.

AN: Okay, I'll admit. I have a thing for 'end of the world/what do the survivors do/road-trip' stories, and I've wanted to do something like this for awhile. I blame Stephen King and his excellent book _The Stand _for my obsession. Now, my curiosity has been peaked about what would the kids from Yu-Gi-Oh do if the world did indeed end. Take heed, though, because not all of them are going to make it. Also, this is rated M for a reason; mostly due to subject matter. When it gets down to it 'end of the world' plus 'teenagers' plus 'human nature' is pretty much always going to equal out to a 'M' rating. Okay, enough rambling from me: let's move on with the story.

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><p><strong>Prologue<strong>

On October 8 at approximately 4:16 A.M. in a lab that no company or government would ever willingly admit to knowing about, an accident occurred. A single small vial, which had been locked away safely for the past six years, was somehow relabeled by the computer as a Level One virus strain instead of a Level Four. It was a fluke, really. A one in a billion thing that no one on the project would have ever dreamed would happen. Computers didn't randomly change numbers, after all; or, at least, they weren't supposed too. Perhaps they should have been a bit more paranoid given what they were working with, but the computer system had been put in to prevent this very thing from happening. Humans made those sorts of mistakes, and that had been their biggest concern from the beginning. Computer error should have been.

Of course had any of them been privy to the events in the virtual world on KaibaCorps island than they might not have believed that this was just some random error on the systems part later on. They might have even been prepared for something like this had they known that one of their former backers, a man who was perfectly aware of what this virus could do after watching their research progression from his digital domain, had failed in his first attempt to destroy the world and his adopted son. Any man who would digitize his own mind as a failsafe would surely have a backup plan or two in case his original plan had not gone accordingly. If his adopted son wouldn't have been so busy and distracted by the tournament that he was holding at the time, he would have likely realized that too, though there still wouldn't have been anything he could have done to stop this. Call it Fate, Destiny, or just Bad Luck, but it was going to happen sooner or later. People didn't create something like this just for the challenge of it, after all.

Two weeks after that one little number change, the vial was pulled from its shelf for a lab test on an animal. It went air born the moment the top was popped off of what was thought to be a low level, harmless virus. A minute later, the dog and scientist were both dead. Less than five minutes later, the entire floor had succumbed. At ten no one on in the actual labs were breathing.

There were other precautions that had been in place should such a thing as this occur. Guards were stationed with strict instruction that should a catastrophe happen than they were to make sure that no one left. The men were well paid to insure that this happened. It wasn't enough, though.

A man on the cleaning staff had come in late to work and saw the place was on lockdown. He didn't know what the people there actually did, but he knew enough to know that for that to happen it had to be something bad. The guards were in their towers and tried to motion him to come in because he had already passed the containment line. Instead, he threw the car in the reverse and ran. They couldn't catch him: they were locked inside. Glancing out his opened window, he looked back at the lab once and then kept driving.

He died two days later in the middle of a crowded city hospital emergency room.

They said it was pneumonia caused by an untreated case of the flu.

If Gozaburo Kaiba still had a body or a digital consciousness, he would have laughed.

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><p>AN2: So, should I continue?<p> 


End file.
